All seems quiet on the school board front these days since the turmoil surrounding the departure of Ann Hill as the Scottish School Board Association’s chief executive. Not that the departure lounge has been wholly empty - leading light Gino Satti of West Dunbartonshire decided to throw in the towel, reputedly after falling out with president Alan Smith, the Lazarus comeback kid of the SSBA.
As it happens, we can tell how healthy the organisation is these days since it has just had elections for its 33-strong executive board. Well, “elections” is putting it rather strongly; only three ballots are being held in Argyll, Fife and Midlothian, while 14 others took their seats with no contest.
That makes 16 vacancies, a marginal improvement on the 18 empty chairs as of last November. Frankly, we don’t know if this is significant or not.
What is possibly significant is that interest in a national voice for school boards seems to have completely collapsed in the main cities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen which are once again without a representative on the board.
But Glasgow has found one - another Lazarus figure, John Tierney, a former president who stepped down some time ago after falling out with . . . now that would be telling.
